“I’m sorry I’m late.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to keep coming. That wasn’t a real curse.”
“I know. I come because I want to come.”
“Good.” She started to burrow back into her patch of muck.
“Wait—” He caught her by the wrist. (It was undoubtedly a wrist.)
Her eyes whipped up. Her lips pulled back. She hissed.
Adam let go—but he didn’t look away. He sat down in the mud with her. “Please wait. I want to talk to you . . . This is where I would say your name if I knew it. For emphasis.”
“So noted,” she said. She was still sort of hissing.
“I would say your name, and then I would say—I come here every day, because I want to come here. Because I want to see you.”
“I know that. Adam.”
“You do?”
“Well, I didn’t figure you enjoyed the smell. Or the view.”
(The view from the riverbed was dismal. The fact that it hasn’t been mentioned yet only proves that point; it was exactly the sort of thing you couldn’t see from the road.)
“I have a house,” he said, getting back on track. She was always pulling him off track.
“You told me about it once. You said it was safe.”
“Yes. I have a safe house with a soft bed. I have a warm hearth. Fresh bread, every day. Running water.”
She’d pulled her arm away, but she was still there, peeking out at him from behind long, dirt-caked ropes of hair.
“It’s right on the road,” he said. “The smoothest part of it.”
“You’re very lucky,” she said.
“You could be lucky!” He hadn’t meant to shout it. “Darling . . . ,” he whispered. “I could make you lucky.”
She was hidden behind the ropes. “You shouldn’t call me that.”
“I wouldn’t have to if you’d tell me your name.”
She was being very still. Adam understood that he should be still, too. That they were both trying not to crack.
She wrapped her finger-like things around his ankle. They really were webbed. “Adam,” she said, “I can’t live on the road. I’m a bridge troll.”
“I could build a bridge,” he said. He wasn’t sure where.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said.
“Don’t be mean.”
“I’m a bridge troll!”
“What do bridge trolls even do?” Adam demanded.
She wrapped her other hand around his other ankle.
He reached out to touch her cheek. (It felt like silt. But it was certainly a cheek.)
“We eat stones!” she hissed. “And children’s bones! But mostly we trick men into our clutches.”
“Fine,” Adam said, “I’m tricked!”
Her fingers were so tight around his ankles. “I can’t live on the road with you!”
“Because of the crows?”
“The crows?! No.”
“You made me feel weak because of the crows.”
“Oh, Adam, you are weak. Sometimes it’s the thing I like best about you. You’re so fucking soft.”
He rubbed his fingers along her cheek, pushing through the dirt, wanting to see what was underneath.
“It isn’t the crows,” she said.
“Is it the Bouts of Delirium?”
“You’ve never mentioned the Bouts of Delirium.”
“I was going to mention them, when you agreed to live with me. I was going to warn you about everything. I wanted to show you the road first. So you’d understand.”
She was letting him scrape the muck away from her cheek. She was reaching her fingers up the cuffs of his jeans.
“Adam, you know what the road is doing, don’t you?”
“I know more about the road than you do. I grew up there!”
“Then you know,” she said, “that the road is killing everything.”
He hadn’t expected her to say that. Maybe you didn’t expect her to say that. Magical creatures are usually more cryptic.
“Not everything,” Adam said.
She laughed. (He did make her laugh. At least once a day.)
“Everything,” she said, “eventually.”
“But not today,” he said. This felt like an important thing to say. This felt like the right thing to say, and it must have been at least a little right, because she was clutching at the back of his calves now and pulling herself up between his legs.
“This is why you should come live with me on the road,” he said. (He was begging, really.) “Because the road will be the last thing to die. And until it dies, it will be so safe. And so warm. And so easy.”
“Adam.” She fell forward on his chest. He shifted his arms to catch her—to pull her up, his hands on either side of her rib cage. She was heavy in his arms, not as slick as she’d once been, colder than he expected.
“My love,” he said. (If only she’d tell him her name, he wouldn’t be this embarrassing.)
“I can’t live with you,” she said.
“You can,” he whispered. He tried to hiss it, but his tongue wasn’t built for sibilance. “I want you.”
“My love,” she said, and she didn’t even have an excuse to sound embarrassing. “Go home. Come back tomorrow. Bring me coffee.”
“The coffee seems silly now,” he said. “I would have brought you gold. I could have brought you frankincense and myrrh—I know where to find them. You can get them lots of places up there.”
“Come back tomorrow,” she said, “and bring me something sweet. Bring me something dear that you didn’t have to fight for.”
Adam left.
But first he cried.
He didn’t go back to work—what was the point? He went back home and climbed into his clean, soft bed without changing out of his muddy clothes.
He closed his eyes. He focused hard. On good things: rain, her.
Eventually, he slept.
It was raining when Adam woke up. It had been so long since it rained.
My mother was right, he thought. Good things come to good people.
He squeezed through the hedge and nearly lost his balance on the other side. The ground was wet. He’d brought lattes today. She might like something hot.
It was raining hard; Adam may have focused too much. Everything that had been dry and dusty was wet and running. Even the river had come back to life, a muddy stream rushing under the bridge.
“Hello!” Adam shouted. “I’m here!”
He looked out to the center of the channel, where she liked to wait for him. The last place to dry out, the first place to get wet.
“I’m here,” he called out again. “I’ve got a Peppermint Mocha and a Chestnut Praline. Not only would I choose the mint, but I actually hate the chestnut. That’s a full-on aggression!”
She didn’t answer. He couldn’t see her. It was raining too hard. And the wind was blowing.
Adam sat down at the edge of the riverbed and waited. The coffee got cold.
“Hello!” he shouted.
He was standing on the bridge, leaning over the railing. The rain was still coming down. The river was so high it had devoured his path along the bank.